


The Reverse of Falling

by BelladonnaWyck, raiast



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Dark Will Graham, Emotional Boys Being Emotional, First Time, M/M, Manipulative Hannibal Lecter, Manipulative Will Graham, Murder Foreplay, Murder Husbands, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Vulnerable Hannibal Lecter, Vulnerable Will Graham, Worship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-01
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:01:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 19,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24496894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BelladonnaWyck/pseuds/BelladonnaWyck, https://archiveofourown.org/users/raiast/pseuds/raiast
Summary: Hannibal isn’t so proud that he can’t admit there’d always been something inherently pleasurable in seeing Will cry. Stolen moments, so brief and so few in their numbers, but beautiful nonetheless.Willis beautiful; his beauty never more elevated and obvious than when eyes the color of sea glass turn bright and crystalline with unshed tears, his eyelashes clumped with salt deposits, and his waterline rimmed in red.
Relationships: Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 27
Kudos: 235





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TempestandTeacup](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TempestandTeacup/gifts).



> Thank you to the lovely @TempestandTeacup for the prompt! Chapter Two coming next week!

Will Graham is conflicted. Hannibal can see it in the tension in his shoulders, the flex of his jaw - the side not marred by the Dragon, of course. Hannibal is certain Will is waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak, always so untrusting and suspicious. Especially of Hannibal. He probably assumes Hannibal intends on returning to seek out Will’s erstwhile family. He considers reminding Will that Molly Foster had been more than ready to move on even before their marriage night, thus making her not even an afterthought in any of Hannibal’s plans, but he’s sure Will is perfectly aware.

Hannibal isn’t so proud that he can’t admit there’d always been something inherently pleasurable in seeing Will cry. Stolen moments, so brief and so few in their numbers, but beautiful nonetheless. _Will_ is beautiful; his beauty never more elevated and obvious than when eyes the color of sea glass turn bright and crystalline with unshed tears, his eyelashes clumped with salt deposits, and his waterline rimmed in red. 

Will’s voice shook when he’d admitted, whisper-quiet, like a long-kept secret, that he’d _enjoyed_ killing Garrett Jacob Hobbs. That was the first time Hannibal had been gifted with Will’s sorrow. _True_ sorrow. Will had been in mourning for the life he’d lost, the lines he’d finally crossed. His eyes had been an ocean storm, lines of sorrow cutting trails down his flushed cheeks. Hannibal had noted, with no small amount of pride, that Will was almost as controlled as Hannibal, just as capable a creature, hiding in a human skin. 

Hannibal had known Will wasn’t ready yet, though. Had known that too much acceptance would force Will to retreat back into the known, back into the black and white world he had caged himself in. Too much admonishment and he’d fight back, would perhaps untangle the webs that made up Hannibal Lecter, that tied him to the Ripper, far too quickly. So, instead, Hannibal had been a sympathetic ear, a sounding board for Will. 

The first time he’d seen beneath the surface, into the heart of Will Graham, had been when he’d slipped his blade into his abdomen, severing their connection, everything that had brought them together. Hannibal had thought himself finished, then. He’d gone to Italy to burn out the look of betrayal that had passed through Will’s eyes that night, but it was etched into his memory palace and would not be forgotten. Hannibal had known, even then, that the grief he’d seen in Will hadn’t been on Abigail’s behalf.

Part of him believes his decision was made that night; the birth of their relationship one of chaos and pain. But, if he is honest with himself, he knows the true ending of Hannibal Lecter had come as he’d stood in the snow outside a small cabin window and witnessed a private, solitary moment in time, a slip in Will Graham’s own facade as tears bitter and cold and full of true grief slipped down his cheeks when he thought he’d lost Hannibal for good.

He’d given himself up so that Will would always know where he was, so that Hannibal would always know this part of Will, this beautiful, raw, uncompromised, part would always _ache_ for him, just as _his_ monster ached for Will. 

But no. The truth died with them on that clifftop, when Hannibal had seen Will’s face stained with the blood of their fallen foe, so dark as to appear like ink under the moonlight, his tears cutting a path through the crimson to slip down his cheeks and his chin, wetting Hannibal’s collar further as he’d pulled Will closer. 

Hannibal’s own tears had been lost to the salted, roiling waves of the Atlantic. Had been pressed to cold, blue lips as he’d desperately tried to force air into Will’s seizing lungs. Hannibal is Achilles, and Will is his weakened heel; the only weakness he’s known since Mischa. 

Will cries far more often, these days, and his tears are still just as beautiful as Hannibal always imagined, even if he knows that he is not always, or even often, the reason for them. He cries for the loss of the only life he’s ever known, perhaps, or for the snapping of that final strand of innocence that Will has clung to so tightly for so many years. But not for Hannibal.

He would not often describe himself as a jealous creature, but Hannibal _burns_ for Will’s tears. And he is, apparently, not above petty manipulation to extract them.

“You know, Will, depression is a real concern in a situation such as ours,” Hannibal informs him brusquely when his invitation for Will to join him at the Farmer’s Market is met with a disinterested hum and the sloshing of a bottle. “And alcohol itself is a depressant. It would behoove you to go easy on the whiskey. Particularly in the mornings.”

Will’s eyes stare vacantly ahead - they so often do, as of late - but Hannibal knows his words have been received, registered, by the sly, lazy smirk that slowly twists Will’s lips. “You suggesting I switch to uppers during the day?”

“I’m suggesting you find a hobby,” Hannibal rejoins flatly. “Buy a boat and go fishing. Find some wretched mongrel to take in. Spend some time brushing up on your Spanish.”

“I’m thinking about leaving,” Will announces, as though the topic weren’t entirely out of left field. And as if he’s uncertain that Hannibal could be anything other than perfectly aware of his meaning - as though Hannibal’s entire world hasn’t just narrowed jarringly to the Will Graham shaped thing on the couch before him - Will’s eyes slide to Hannibal’s face and he adds, _“Alone.”_

What rankles more than the fact that this notion actually bothers Hannibal greatly is the fact that he knows that is not where Will’s intention lies. The former profiler isn’t attempting to do anything as banal as _hurt_ Hannibal, or goad him into a fight; he’s simply doing what has always come naturally to him: using Hannibal as a sounding board. 

And because Hannibal senses that a great deal relies on his next response, he shutters himself away within a hastily constructed person suit and asks, “Where would you go?”

Will gives a lazy shrug and a quick jerk of his head, spilling curls long in need of a trim into his eyes. He doesn’t bother to brush them away, and Hannibal swallows down the urge to do so himself. “Canada. Argentina. Timbuktu. Does it matter?”

“One might argue it matters greatly. What happiness would you find in any of those places, that you’ve been so unsuccessful in finding here?”

“Are you concerned I’ll be unhappy if I leave, Hannibal?” Will’s voice is soft, considering, as though he’s posed the question more to himself aloud than to the actual person whom he addressed. “Or do you fear the opposite?”

Hannibal steps closer to the couch, and Will’s grip on the whiskey bottle in his lap goes lax as he allows Hannibal to pull it away. He sets it on the floor, to the side of the couch, and then balances on his haunches so he’s finally at eye level with Will. He gives into the temptation to sweep the hair from the other man’s face, briefly, and then pulls his touch away.

“I fear that you are about to tread down a path that I know myself too well. One which I hadn’t found unsatisfying until I met you and loneliness was cast in sharp relief. Wherever you go, Will, you will always know how it felt to be _seen._ Who will see you, if not me? Who but me could accept every dark impulse, every facet of who you are?”

Will’s voice is low and steady when he speaks, but Hannibal’s efforts are rewarded with a slight, watery shine to Will’s dazzling blue eyes. “Maybe I don’t care to be seen.”

“You will,” Hannibal assures him. In that, he is perfectly honest. How could he ever have predicted that every emotional barrier he had constructed throughout his life between himself and the rest of the human race could be demolished so effectively by the mere knowledge that Will Graham existed? When they’d met in Jack Crawford's office, all those years ago, Hannibal could never have expected his entire world would narrow into such bleak, sobering focus at the idea of life without Will. 

Will blinks and the wet sheen to his eyes disappears, replaced in turn by a flash of something sharp. Hannibal’s not surprised when that easy smirk twists Will’s lips once again, his face dipping closer to Hannibal’s in an attempt to derail their conversation. Hannibal allows the soft kiss Will presses to his mouth, also unsurprised when it ends with a sharp nip to his bottom lip, and then pulls back with a sigh.

“I’m not particularly in the mood to be fucked at the moment, Will.”

Will’s smirk widens to a devious grin, his eyes heavy-lidded as he purrs back without a moment’s delay, “ _I_ am.”

Will remains as manipulative as ever. The mongoose beneath the house now nestled in between Hannibal’s ribs, rearranging his bones and hollowing him out bit by selfish bit. All Will does these days is _take._ After a lifetime of being given everyone else’s trauma, joy, madness, and pain, Will now only ever takes what he wants. And what he wants from Hannibal is no less than everything. 

The sheer intimacy of the suggestion, nevermind the images it dredges forth, feels like another gunshot wound. Like a knife to his own gut. It pierces him, sharp and glittering and deadly in what it offers. A chance to see behind the curtain, the amalgam shroud Will wears of all the people he’s ever known, and some he hasn’t. It’s pulled back, exposing the still-beating heart of him, and Hannibal, for the first time in his life, is unsteady. He feels unmoored, unsure of how to proceed. 

So he stitches himself back together, replaces his finely woven person suit, and takes Will’s tauntingly proferred hand. 

In the face of such insecurity of reason, Hannibal does what he does best: he follows Will Graham into the unknown. 

\---

Will’s life before Hannibal Lecter, while not exactly easy and carefree, had _certainly_ been less complicated. He’d found a way to make peace with the darker urges that lingered within him - namely by burying them deep, pretending they didn’t exist, and swearing up and down to himself that every time he stepped into the mind of a killer there wasn’t a trace amount of heady excitement slithering deep beneath his disgust and horror. He’d even contented himself with the undeniable fact that all he would ever have, all he could trust with any reliability, was a snuffling pile of shedding fur and wet noses.

And then, Hannibal. And then blood, and misery, and fury and _acceptance._

And years of struggling, in which Hannibal was always more than happy to shape events to his own will, to take what he wanted in pursuit of whatever single-minded goal he’d focused himself on - Will, it seemed, had been that goal for some time. 

And now Hannibal has him.

And now it’s Will’s turn to take.

So, since that night, the night they slayed a Dragon, took communion of his flesh and blood and then baptized themselves in the unforgiving, transformative waters of the Atlantic, Will has always just taken what he’s wanted from Hannibal, what he was _owed_ \- he’s been certain to make it good for the other man, sure, but he’s never been particularly _careful_ with the cannibal. 

Their joinings, up until now, have been bruising grips and scraping teeth, brutal thrusts that slam too hard, too fast into an under-prepared body. Hannibal matches him tooth and nail and never complains - simply content for the moments that Will is able and willing to pull himself from the quiet slumps of his lingering depression, he suspects - so Will is more than expectant to receive the same treatment in return. After all, Hannibal is not a _gentle_ creature. Any moment of tenderness he’s ever extended to Will has always stemmed from a place of either curiosity, or a selfish drive to achieve his own gains. To _know_ Will in ways no one else had ever even dared.

Will doesn’t know why he thought this would be any different, doesn’t know _why_ he hadn’t expected this. These soft caresses and worshipful kisses, this fond affection that shines in Hannibal’s eyes as though he’s gazing upon the answer to the universe. He doesn’t expect tenderness from Hannibal and, moreso, he doesn’t _want it._ So of course that’s exactly what he’s given.

Hannibal has never had a stellar track record regarding the things Will _wants._ Will is uncertain why the fact that Hannibal has decided to go his own way surprises him at all.

He’d led Hannibal to the bedroom with all the confidence of a man trying desperately to distract his companion from an unsavory subject. Now he stands in the room, watching Hannibal move to begin stripping out of the linen suit he’d just donned to go to the market with not a clue as to how to proceed.

Ignoring Hannibal’s gaze, or perhaps emboldened by it, Will removes his own clothes. He doesn’t do it carefully, or gently, doesn’t fold everything meticulously in a neat pile on the sitting chair. He tosses each article in a different direction, not waiting for it to hit the ground before he removes the next one. He wonders at how patient he can make Hannibal be for him. How much the other man would withstand before he breaks. 

Once he’s disrobed, Will crawls into the bed they sometimes share, smaller but no less grandiose than the one Hannibal had in his Baltimore house. He settles in the center on his hands and knees, looking back over his shoulder as he watches Hannibal silently and slowly unbutton the sleeves of his dress shirt. He arches his back enticingly while he waits, his eyes surely growing darker with his lust as Hannibal slowly dismantles himself, artists hands gliding effortlessly over buttons and fabric.

Hannibal exposes himself bit by bit, dismantling his person suit just as easily and naturally as he’s dismantled Will’s entire life, everything he’d ever thought he’d known about himself all twisted into a scrap heap pile awaiting his promised _becoming._

Even as Hannibal prepares to have Will in a way he’s never before been allowed, his low, rhythmic words turn back to their conversation in the study, not allowing Will to escape them. “I have always seen you, Will. Watched you. Do you know, I used to cherish the moments when your facade would crack and I could see the spring of emotion welling up within you. I counted the times I saw you cry - so few, a rare and precious thing. Your tears have always been art, Will, painting your fear and sorrow across the canvas of your face.”

His eyes run over Will’s face as he speaks, lingering on his scar, his lips, and then he takes another step forward. “We both know what it is to be seen, and we both know the heartache of being seen and then rejected. You cried so beautifully for me that night. The first time I was wholly inside of you. A far more intimate gift, even, than this will be.” Hannibal moves closer still, and Will is certain he can smell the fevered sweetness of Will’s flesh, damp with sweat and his blood coursing with adrenaline as he holds himself up on his palms. Hannibal knows Will isn’t afraid, not in the traditional sense. Not of him. Will has never been afraid of Hannibal. “But we both know your tears were for me and me alone, sweet Will.”

Hannibal is within touching distance now, and he doesn’t keep himself from reaching out to trail his fingertips along the curvature of Will’s jaw, the landscape of his face forever changed by the Dragon’s brutality. Hannibal traces the jagged scar barely concealed by Will’s stubble, his grin turning feral when Will can’t stop his little gasp of surprised pleasure. Will has always coveted Hannibal’s marks on his body, and while this one was given to him by another, Hannibal owns it just as he owns everything else that is Will.

“You so desperately wanted your tears to be for what you’d lost, to honor them, but you knew those things had never truly been yours; Abigail simply another victim to your whims. You cling to the polite mundanity of the moral compass you were equipped with by society. But ultimately, Abigail was given away just as easily as Jack or Bev or Wally. As easily as your pretty little wife.” Will’s eyes grow a sharper edge for just a moment, the dangerous glint there and gone in the blink of an eye, but Will is certain Hannibal is content to know he managed to pull such a visceral response already, Will’s monster closer to the surface than ever. They don’t talk about those things. They don’t talk about much of anything at all anymore.

Hannibal finally joins him on the bed, and Will is certain his surprise is palpable when he finds himself flipped from the position he’d taken up naturally. Well, perhaps not naturally. Will wants to avoid the intimacy of this act, but of course Hannibal won’t allow him such control. 

Loving Hannibal Lecter is like holding the blade of a sword with your bare hands and then driving it into your own chest. Too sharp, too bright. Hannibal’s love is consuming and possessive, no room within it for more than the two of them. 

Will looks just to the right of Hannibal’s dark amber eyes, but Hannibal doesn’t allow that either, wrapping his palm around Will’s jaw and turning him so that they look directly into one another’s eyes. “Did you notice you never wear your glasses anymore? A curious thing, barriers. Ways we can interact with the world around us and those contained within it. Ultimately a falsity, a construct created to protect and distance. We haven’t needed such things in quite some time though, have we?” 

As he stares into the abyss of those eyes, Will imagines that sometimes it’s easier to live than to fall in love with the false high of letting _go_. 

Tossing them over the cliff had been his declaration that he no longer wanted the falsity, but couldn’t fathom how to live his life without the security those boundaries afforded. He didn’t want to live without something real, tangible. Things he knew he’d never get from Hannibal. If he couldn’t live without Hannibal, but had no idea how to live with him either, it only tracked that he’d kill them both. Remove the blight of them from the world and salt the earth from whence they’d come, a baptism by fire and blood and moonlight. He gave them up to the mercy of the sea for this very reason.

Except there had been no mercy. No reprieve. And there wouldn’t be now either. With a heavy sigh, Will finally responds to Hannibal’s diatribe.

“I cried because I should have been ashamed. I should have been _mortified_ . But instead I was heartbroken as I watched you walk away. It _hurt,_ Hannibal. Cutting you out of myself like a metastatic cancer. But you grew back, didn’t you?” They both know Will isn’t talking about the stabbing, even as Hannibal’s fingers find his scar and trace its outline. “I chased you, determined to rip the remnants of you from my heart by any means necessary. But instead, I found you in Italy. With _her_. And somehow that just hurt more. Made me want to burn you from my memory and leave the ashes in my lungs to choke me.”

Hannibal smiles, and it isn’t kind. But it also isn’t the cruel smirk Will has come to know. "Bedelia was a distraction. A poor one, as it turned out. I was only ever meant for you. Identically different, remember? Crafted solely for one another."

Hannibal’s head dips lower, and Will finds his own tilting up to meet him, teeth bared and ready to join the fray of the violent kisses that he’s come to know between them. But Hannibal does not claim his mouth in a bruising, biting kiss. Instead, his face tilts and he presses his lips to the underside of Will’s jaw softly. Another kiss joins the first, and then another, each just below the one before it, trailing lower and lower down Will’s throat with unbearable tenderness.

Will’s breath catches in his chest, an instant, undeniable burn in his eyes as a soft sound of distress erupts from around the lump in his throat. Hannibal’s hush is just the barest breath against his skin, his lips sealing around Will’s pounding pulse with a soft suck. His body crowds over Will’s own, his weight settling over him in something that is somehow both comforting and overwhelmingly suffocating.

And his _hands -_ slipping through Will’s curls, stroking down his jaw, petting over his chest and flanks; each touch both soothing and incensing, merely tolerated by Will even as he craves _more._

If loving Hannibal is like a sword to the chest, having his love and adoration in return is a brutality; terrible and mighty in its ferocity. Will feels swept away by it, lost in a deluge of emotions like a damn breaking, just as out of control now as he always is with Hannibal. He should expect by now that the Doctor will never let him go.

The hand not cradling his face treads lower, dangerously close - not close enough - to Will’s cock, flushed and hard, _achingly_ _hard,_ against his stomach. It passes near and then dips lower, to where Will’s thighs have instinctively spread open, despite this never having occurred between the two of them before. Hannibal must have retrieved the lube while Will was getting into position on the bed, because his fingers are slick and cool when they pet over Will’s hole, and Will can’t stop the shudder that shakes down his spine, can’t stop his legs from spreading wider.

Hannibal’s lips leave Will’s throat long enough for him to tip his head up and catch Will’s gaze. He doesn’t ask if Will has ever done this before - Will isn’t sure if it’s because he already knows the answer or doesn’t care what the answer is. He merely locks his dark eyes onto Will’s and then pushes a single digit in slowly, unrelenting until it can go no further, then pulls it out and begins again.

“I’m not your teacup, Hannibal. Stop being so gentle with me.” 

“No, you’re not a teacup, Will. But you _are_ precious to me. Let me take my time, show you the worship you are worthy of. I have wanted this, have waited. I _will_ enjoy it at my leisure.” 

Will bristles beneath him, relieved when his huff of breath comes out unamused rather than shaky. “Just get on with it.” He’s not sure if even he believes himself, his desires a tangled web of destruction lodged in his brain.

Hannibal’s head cocks to the side in that _curious_ way he has, the imitation of a smile quirking his lips. The next time he slides into Will, he adds a second finger. “So eager to be done with it? This _was_ your suggestion, dear Will.”

“I said you could fuck me, Hannibal, not play with your food.” 

Hannibal is blessedly silent for several long moments, his fingers keeping up a slow, steady pace within Will, rubbing all along his inner walls without ever fully touching his prostate. It’s as infuriating as it is intoxicating, his entire body primed like a livewire. 

“Hannibal,” Will finally allows, senses in the same way a prey creature senses a predator that Hannibal wants to hear Will break, wants him to beg. Hannibal did always enjoy hearing Will’s words, his explicit rather than tacit acceptance. 

“Yes, darling Will?” Hannibal’s smile is sharp and full of teeth as he pushes another finger against Will’s rim, not allowing it to sink in but applying pressure. Will tries to arch into the touch, but Hannibal has a palm to his chest that keeps him pinned, unable to move as he wants. 

Will already feels full and pierced even with just two fingers, he can’t imagine anything more than just this, just Hannibal’s thick fingers and the pressure against his inner walls. He loses himself in it, only for a moment, but it’s enough for Hannibal to press the advantage, leaning low to lick at the weeping tip of Will’s cock where it peeks from beneath his foreskin. 

It seems Will has remained silent for too long, Hannibal taking it as his opening to continue speaking. “You look beautiful like this, Will. Resplendent in your loveliness and your pleasure. I would see you like this always. Captured perfectly in eternal euphoria.” 

“You’re fingering my ass, not drafting your next poem,” Will hopes his words sound as venomous as they feel as they drip from his tongue, but something pressing at the back of his skull tells him they don’t. He sounds breathless already, just from this. Just from having Hannibal’s strong, artist’s fingers inside of him, playing him just as astutely as any of his beloved instruments. 

Will has the insane thought that his body is nearly as chaotic as the theremin in its lack of predictability. Just as well-loved and well worn. He hates that the idea of Hannibal’s love stirs something in his guts, a bone-deep ache that only Hannibal’s weight above him seems able to soothe. 

“I much prefer composing music to writing sonnets,” Hannibal tells him, as though he has a direct line to Will’s train of thought. “Your body, my instrument,” he dips his head low to mouth at Will’s cock once more, deftly sliding the third finger inside and hooking sharply against Will’s prostate. “Your cries, the dulcet melody I extract with every touch,” he keeps on, murmuring against Will’s hip over the sobbing gasp wrenched from Will’s throat at the sensation.

 _“Fuck,”_ Will snarls, finally caving and planting his feet into the mattress in an attempt to work his hips up to direct Hannibal’s fingers back to that spot. Hannibal’s iron grip on his hip, even with only one hand, is more than effective enough to keep Will in place, and he’s embarrassed when a needy whine slips from his throat. 

Hannibal’s mouth is at his in a breath, drinking down the helpless groan as the three fingers in Will’s ass plunge deep and then curl coyly to rest just shy of his prostate. “Lovely,” Hannibal murmurs against Will’s lips, the words caught between them in a painfully soft kiss, “Incredible Will,” he continues, his fingers twitching to brush teasingly over that spot again, just the barest hint of pressure, and Will begins to quake beneath him. “My perfect beloved. You threaten to leave me, and then expect me not to take the opportunity to memorize every inch of you?”

“Didn’t _threaten,”_ Will’s breath is shaky as it leaves him, his hands curling to clench the sheets at his sides as that light pressure slowly grows more insistent. “It was just - just a thought I had,” he grits out around a groan as Hannibal’s digits begin to massage him at a maddeningly languid pace. “Please -” Whatever mortifying plea that’s about to fall from Will’s lips is overtaken by an even _more_ shameful sob as Hannibal’s other hand wraps around his cock and begins to stroke.

It feels so good - _so fucking good -_ and Will falls boneless into the mattress and allows it to continue, swallowing down the desire to urge Hannibal along when it lodges insistently in his throat. He’s tried to appeal to Hannibal’s ego, tried begging, and it has yet to get him any closer to his goal - namely, to have the chaotic and discordant thoughts that have been plaguing him fucked right out of his skull.

If anything, Will is thinking even _more,_ and that’s entirely counterintuitive to his plan.

Suddenly, Hannibal removes his fingers from Will’s body and leaves him an open, cavernous hole. Will wonders when he started to consider himself as incomplete without Hannibal’s influence, without his proximity. He feels empty, hollowed out and barren without Hannibal’s fingers inside of him, filling him up and spreading him out until he’s nearly breaking. 

Hannibal loves like most people fight, but Will relishes in it. Loves the rose despite the thorns, or perhaps precisely because of them, addicted to cutting himself on Hannibal’s sharpest parts. He nearly growls when Hannibal pulls away, but doesn’t have time to protest as he’s moved more centrally onto the mattress, Hannibal never leaving his place between Will’s thighs. 

Finally, after what feels like both eons and mere seconds, Hannibal settles himself so that his wet, red cockhead is pressed against Will’s pliant rim, his muscles gone lax from the persistent attention. He nearly refuses to allow himself to acknowledge the safety that he feels when in Hannibal’s presence, but he knows it would be a futile effort. 

“You’re the one who said we couldn’t survive separation, Will. You saw to it that night under the blood-soaked moon that we would never need to. And yet, here we are. Nearly a year later and you’re _lost._ You still refuse to evolve, to become what we both know you’re capable of becoming.” 

Hannibal’s words are emphasized with the ever-increasing pressure of his cock breaching Will’s hole, agonizingly slowly as he carves out a place for himself inside of Will’s body, as though he hasn’t always been there. As though he doesn’t belong already. 

“I’m not lost. Murder isn’t art, Hannibal. It isn’t beautiful or poetic or transformative. It’s ugly and it’s cold and bitter. It’s the _final act,_ not the intermission.” Will lies, knows most likely that Hannibal is perfectly aware of the lie; can probably smell it on the air like a bloodhound after a scent. 

Hannibal doesn’t deign to respond to the clear untruths, simply smiles that knife-sharp smile, his teeth as white as bleached bones as he looks into Will’s eyes. He sees through them and down Will’s esophagus, down past his clenching heart and his seizing lungs and the black tar that coats his insides, into his very guts. Into the center of his being. Stag horns and brambles line the swiftly running waters of Will’s stream nowadays, and Hannibal sees it all. And even then it’s not enough; Hannibal still sees _more._ More of Will than any other person - dead or alive - has ever seen. No one else has even come close. Not his daddy back in Biloxi, not Jack Crawford or Alana Bloom. Not Molly Foster. 

The pressure doesn’t cease, Will’s body parting easily for Hannibal as though Hannibal were simply an extension of Will instead of the opposite. Perhaps they aren’t so twisted and tied together, perhaps there’s still the possibility of wholeness, of completeness without being bound together so tightly as to lose focus of where one begins or ends. Maybe there is a world where they can both exist without always causing one another pain.

As Hannibal finally sinks fully into Will’s body, his mind is thrust back to their first meeting, viewed through the glass of the first barrier he’d tried to place in front of Hannibal. Eye contact told so much and gave so little, but Hannibal had crashed through that boundary and all the others Will had attempted to erect. No forts in the bone arena of his skull, no teacups or time reversals. 

He is drifting and he knows it, tries to claw his way back over blood-soaked earth and a sharp precipice, just in time to be caught like a moth pinned to a board by the gleam in Hannibal’s eyes. _“You_ are art, darling. And I have loved you from that first moment, all those years ago. I had never known loneliness until I knew you. How could I have known its shape until I knew yours? I didn’t understand until I had you behind bars, a gaping wound left in my life limmed in your shape, in your scent. Despair has its own calms, to be sure, but I never knew stillness, never understood peace until I found you.” 

As Hannibal talks he begins to pull out again, and on his next press forward Will has to swallow the scream that has been building in his chest, perched just behind his teeth. He can feel his throat burning with unshed tears, refuses to let them fall even as Hannibal lays himself bare before him. Not just his words, no. Hannibal is a man of actions. He’s as open and exposed as Will is, his heart on display as flagrantly as the gift he’d left for Will in Italy. It’s nearly blinding to look into Hannibal’s eyes and see his _heart._ The place inside of him that’s shaped like Will and _aches_ to be filled. 

He doesn’t say the words back. He can’t. His breath is stolen and his lips won’t form them. Instead he keeps _looking,_ seeing into Hannibal and _knowing_ him. Hannibal’s pace is just as slow now as he was with his fingers, nearly torturous but so good it hurts. Hannibal keeps him filled, cradles his nape and slides his fingers through Will’s sweaty curls until he can lift him just enough to kiss him. 

They never do this with Hannibal on his back. Will has always demanded Hannibal bent over the closest piece of furniture, or on his hands and knees, never like this. Never with this unignorable intimacy. He can’t say the words so instead he does the only thing he can do. 

He lets his tears fall. He can feel them leak warm and wet from the corners of his eyes, drip down his cheeks and his chin and pool uncomfortably around his ears, joining the sweat and moisture already caught in his hair. 

“Perhaps you were right about one thing, dear Will. You are not lost. I will not let you wander into the unknown alone, wherever you go I will follow. Wherever you are, I shall be.” 

Will feels his orgasm building, his cock throbbing with his need to come. His heart feels devoured, his brain a conflagration far more dangerous than his encephalitis had been. Through the salt-hazy film of his tears, he sees the most wondrous thing. He sees Hannibal as though all versions of him are layered atop one another from start to finish. He sees the scared little boy covered in blood and snow, he sees the young man first out on his own and carving his name into the world with tooth and claw and the sharp edge of a knife. He sees that monster wandering the earth alone, solitary and content. Until he meets Will.

Will realizes with sudden perfect clarity that he will be Hannibal’s undoing. And not in the vague threatening sort of way he’s always promised him; a reckoning, Will’s final _becoming._ He will raze the very core of Hannibal Lecter, salt the earth where he once stood rooted and see it finished. See _him_ finished. By his own hands. Hannibal Lecter the monster, Hannibal Lecter the finely constructed person suit is already nearing a vague memory. Will _sees_ the truth in the _man_ behind the masks.

It’s with that idea pounding in his temples and the whisper soft touch of Hannibal’s lips to his jaw, tasting his sweat and tracing his scar, that Will comes. Thick, milky ropes spread across the skin where their bodies are connected, his cock pulsing totally untouched. He doesn’t understand why the realization that he’s _won_ leaves him feeling so unsteady.

Hannibal releases a soft hiss against his skin as Will clenches around him, but the steady rocking of his hips doesn’t falter, slowly sinking in and out of Will at a tender, languid pace that promises Hannibal is far from finished with him. It has Will squirming only moments after his orgasm crests, the relentless stimulation to his sensitive prostate dispelling the weightless pleasure that floods through Will’s body faster than he would like.

Within moments, his body is a livewire, and Hannibal’s hand releasing his hair to snake between them and fist Will’s softening cock doesn’t improve the situation at all. Will spasms beneath him at the contact, a helpless groan lodged in his throat as he grits his teeth. Hannibal just continues to push into him, continues to drive Will to his limit and past it, just like he always has. 

He breathes a soft shush to Will’s lips as his free hand cradle’s Will’s jaw, his thumb trailing idly over the line of scar tissue that bisects his cheek. The warmth of Hannibal’s hands - hands that hadn’t even held the slightest tremor as he’d stitched Will up, despite the exorbitant amount of pain he must have been in himself - is almost as unbearable as the lazy, rhythmic invasion of Hannibal inside him, and even though Will’s first instinct is to pull away from them, he remains still. As suffocating and all-consuming as the blazing heat of Hannibal is, Will fears the absence of it even more.

Hannibal’s lips slide from his own and across his jaw, drag up over the swell of his cheek, and it’s only when he feels the spongy, wet tip of Hannibal’s tongue flick across his skin that Will realizes he is following the trail of Will’s tears. His mouth finds Will’s ear, lips ghosting just over the shell of it as his hot, humid breath spills inside, and Will is almost too busy cataloguing all of the sensations that Hannibal’s points of contact are inducing that he nearly doesn’t process Hannibal’s words at all.

“There is no me without you, Will, or you without me. We are one soul that found two bodies, complete only when we are together. You’ve known this for some time, though you still refuse to accept it. You just continue to push against your destiny and attempt to pull away from this, from us, as though there is any future remaining for you but this one.” 

Hannibal pulls back slightly, gazing down at Will, and it’s one of the few times in six years that Will can see the ghost of resigned _pain_ shadowed in Hannibal’s whiskey-soaked eyes.

“Why won’t you let go, my love? Why cling to this struggle when the ending is inevitable?” He gives a soft huff, a small smile twisting his lips as he gazes fondly down at Will. “My darling Sisyphus, pushing that boulder ever onwards only to be thwarted time and again.”

Will’s throat is thick with his tears, his tongue feels heavy even as it moves of its own volition. “I can’t -”

“You _must,”_ Hannibal informs him - bluntly, though not without care. Will doesn’t know when the fuck he got hard again, only realizes that he is when Hannibal’s hand twists around his cockhead on an upstroke, his own still burying itself as deeply into Will as it can achieve. “You won’t know peace until you do.”

“I _know.”_ Will’s tears fall harder, something cathartic cracking open in the depths of his chest as quaking sobs are wrenched out of him in pace with Hannibal’s thrusts, as if each press into him is forcing the emotion from him.

Hannibal’s lips brush against his cheek again, following the trail of his tears. They push across his cheekbone, linger at his damp temple, and then come to rest upon the faint line of scar tissue that stretches nearly the length of Will’s forehead. 

He’s almost painfully hard where Hannibal’s palm remains wrapped around his cock, his body arching into Hannibal’s nearly against his own volition. It’s as though something deep within him is drawn to Hannibal like magnets, helplessly connected even through the pain, through time innumerable. 

“Your tears are intoxicating, my love,” Hannibal murmurs against his forehead, and then dips his head lower to swipe at Will’s damp cheek with his tongue, releasing a soft hum as Will’s body begins to tense with his impending orgasm, dutifully worked from him as though Hannibal intends to eek out every last ounce of Will’s humanity through his cock. “But they’re never as sweet as they are when they stem from your ecstasy. Come for me again, beloved.”

Will’s second climax crests at Hannibal’s murmured urging, and Hannibal’s follows on its tail, their bodies molded together like the clay from creation. Will feels Hannibal’s release like a brand inside his body, Hannibal’s cock pulsing thickly as he empties himself inside. 

In the moments after, Will is quiet as Hannibal cares for him like a kind and gentle lover; he feels wrung out, like he couldn’t cry another tear or utter another word for a week. Hannibal drags a warm, damp cloth down Will’s front, cleaning him of his own seed, and also between his thighs wordlessly, though the fondness glittering in his dark eyes speaks volumes. 

He wishes someone had warned him about what comes after the fall. 

\---

The heat in Cuba is stifling, fills up Will’s lungs with each breath he takes, clings muggy and warm to his face with every exhale. Even so late in the evening, with the sun sinking behind the horizon on a blood-red spill across the ocean, it’s hot, reminds him of long summer nights back home in Biloxi with nothing but cicadas and mosquitos for company. 

Markets in Havana are living, breathing things, and thrumming with life and vibrancy even after closing time. The frantic energy from midday has quelled, but there are still people shuffling around on the street, closing up stalls and making last-minute barters. 

It’s in this quieter, slumbering peace that Will hunts. It’s been a year since the fall, and hunting together, like they’d done on the cliffside that fateful night, is something they still have yet to do. Hannibal would never be so crass as to pressure Will overtly into such a feat, but Will knows Hannibal craves it, desires more than anything to see Will totally freed from the presumed shackles of his former life. 

Even a week after their night together, the night he came undone for Hannibal, he still feels cracked open and exposed, uncomfortable in his own skin. He feels the insane and incessant need to _punish_ Hannibal for what he’s done, and he can think of no better justice than denying Hannibal what he wants most. 

His prey for the evening is a butcher, one Hannibal went to only once after they’d first arrived in Havana. Hannibal had told Will later that the man was lying to patrons, selling them standard beef but marketing it as Kobe. Even his offal hadn’t been up to Hannibal’s standards, the butcher claiming all of his animals were grass fed and free-range, but Hannibal had been able to tell from the _smell_ that they were factory-farmed, many of them sick and malnourished. He’d tossed out everything they’d purchased from the man and Will had watched him mentally file away the name. 

“Hannibal, you can’t kill him. It’s too risky, too close to your known habits. He isn’t worth our capture. Not after everything it has taken to get here.” Will had chided, and Hannibal had sworn he’d let the man live. 

Will is going to kill him. Deprive Hannibal the pleasure of watching the light fade from his eyes and the pallor fade from his flesh. 

The hypodermic needle sits heavy in his pocket, filled to the brim with one of Hannibal’s chemical concoctions. In truth, Will doesn’t need any help in bringing down his target - doesn’t even know what the hell is in the damn syringe; it could just as easily be a tranquilizer as it could some psychotropic experiment that Hannibal whipped up. It’s slightly opaque, and came from a clear, unlabeled bottle in what Will has come to consider Hannibal’s _hunting kit._ All he knows is that it’s enough to flood his prey’s system, enough toxicity to seep into every organ, every cut of meat, until it’s as useless as the pig is.

Nothing of him will be salvageable; in this, too, Will shall deny Hannibal. _This is my design._

It’s laughably easy to track the butcher from his shop to his home, as unaware as he is. It’s disappointingly easy to learn the man’s schedule, assess the best time to strike. He is a creature of habit, and Will has his routine pegged by the third night. He tracks him the following three nights as well, partly to be certain in his assessment but mostly as a way to slip away from the oppressive swell of emotion that still stews between himself and Hannibal; somehow growing even thicker after dinner every night, when the sun stains the sky red as it slips below the horizon, and they sit quietly in the study, Will sipping at his tumbler of whiskey and pretending that Hannibal’s eyes aren’t straying from the book in his lap to slip over Will every few minutes instead.

He wonders if Will is still thinking about leaving, Will is certain, but he refuses to voice the question. Perhaps he’s scared to hear the answer. At the moment, Will isn’t even sure if he knows what answer he’d give. Perhaps that is why it’s such a relief to abscond from their villa every evening. Because when Hannibal does finally surrender to his burning curiosity and asks that question - because he will; the inquiry is an inevitability - Will refuses to let his response to it be _I don’t know._

Hannibal doesn’t ask where Will goes, or when he’ll be back. He doesn’t wait up for him, and that’s just one more relief; Will’s lungs breathe a little easier, his stomach untwists itself each night he arrives home to find that Hannibal has already retired. So he won’t ask Will to come to bed with him, either outright verbally or with the silent invitation he’s crafted with his eyes. And Will doesn’t have to decide if he’s going to refuse him or not, because if he goes up to Hannibal’s bedroom he doesn’t know if Hannibal wants to fuck him or be fucked. And if he _doesn’t_ go, Will doesn’t have to figure out which one he hopes it is or whether or not there’s ever been a difference.

Like every night for the last week, Will stalks his prey from the butcher shop to the bar he frequents on his way home. He’s waiting for the pig when he stumbles out of it again - exiting conveniently from the back into the darkened alleyway and, predictably, alone. 

“Hola, señor,” Will murmurs at the drunkard from where he’s leaning casually against the cool stone wall.

The butcher mumbles a slurred _qué pasa?_ without even glancing in Will’s direction. He doesn’t even seem to notice when Will falls into place behind him, and it takes such little effort to slip the needle into the man’s neck and hold him in place until the last of the fight slips from his limbs that Will almost feels disappointed.

He feels nearly as deprived as Hannibal will be, but he has work to complete. His car waits at the end of the alleyway, and he manages to get the man into it and back to the house with little difficulty. 

He loses himself in a haze, only vague blood-soaked splotches of memory left in the end. He tears the man open, from throat to groin, pulls all of his organs out and throws them unceremoniously in the trash. He never regains consciousness, but Will’s design isn’t about punishing the man or bringing him mental anguish in the form of watching himself be torn apart. This is all for Hannibal.

Hannibal’s steps are faint, but Will hears them from the top of the stairs. He opens a bottle of wine, the same wine he’d brought to Hannibal all those years ago, and he waits.

His hands still feel warm where the blood soaks them, though it is drying tacky along his fingers rapidly. Outside, the ocean beats a steady tide against the sand, heard but not seen in the dark of night. He can’t help but notice that his own heart thumps in time with the rhythm of the waves, his thoughts slowly trickling back to their rebirth from the sea.

\---

Hannibal smells the cloying stench of blood before he feels Will’s absence from their space, before he hears the telltale sounds of the unnatural silence of death. 

He stands at the top of the stairs for several seconds, breathing in the mingled scents of blood, and sweat, and adrenaline; none of it Will’s. 

The kitchen is just to the right of the stairs, and Hannibal makes his way there as though compelled. The smell intensifies as he gets closer, the bright copper now layered with bile and excrement. 

Hannibal knows instantly who is on his table, he’d committed the butcher _\- Enrique Vasquez -_ to memory the first night he’d met the man, though Will had convinced him to take no action against him for his crass behavior or rude deceptions. 

He’s been left to bleed out just like the animals he slaughters, all of his organs removed from his body and his torso an empty cavern, flesh torn violently and without precision. Will must have nicked the bowels as he removed them - carelessly - which accounts for the stench. It doesn’t bother Hannibal - even with his acute sense of smell, it is tolerable, and Hannibal has experienced far worse over the years.

What _isn’t_ tolerable, is the evidence of Will’s actions, laid out across Hannibal’s table like a gift, a mockery of one that he’d left for Hannibal so many years ago. He has half a mind to comment on the fact that Will has a habit of bringing Hannibal his kills like a housecat seeking praise, but the ache that twists in his gut distracts him, and he finds that he isn’t in any mood to be flippant.

For a year now he has reminisced about a perfect union beneath the moon, his darling, perfect, unpredictable Will feral and bathed in blood. He’s recalled the wild heat in his love’s eyes just before he darted forward to gut their prey, sees the rapturous relief that shone in his eyes as Will declared their design _beautiful_ every time Hannibal’s closed his own. 

For a year he has waited, ever patient, for Will to come around, to shake away the last dredges of stubborn morality that cling to his body like an ill-fitting suit. He’s longed to experience Will in such a way once again. And he’s been _denied._

Hannibal isn’t disappointed, he isn’t sure he’s ever been capable of finding fault in Will’s actions, no matter how unpredictable. But the _ache,_ the incessant hunger that gnaws away at his gut to _see…_ It shall, apparently, go unsated for at least a while longer.

Hannibal’s eyes pull from the mess before him, track through the dark room until they locate Will, standing still and silent before the door to their patio. He’s illuminated by the moonlight streaming in, casting his skin in a pale glow. He’s holding a glass of wine in his hands - stained black with blood in the dark of the night - one arm curled across his stomach as the other gives the liquid in its grasp a lazy swirl. The wine is a red, and as it shifts around its container Hannibal can see where Will’s dirty fingers have stained the glassware with smudges of blood.

Will’s own gaze is cast out into the night before him, fixed to where they both know the ocean waves crest against their little spot of beach, even if they can’t be seen. He raises the glass to his lips and takes a sip, but doesn’t otherwise move when Hannibal addresses him.

“Did you have fun this evening, Will? Your efforts certainly appear...enthusiastic.” Hannibal’s eyes catch on Will’s bloody fingers once more, flexing restlessly against the bowl of his wine glass. “This pig reeks of chemicals and excrement,” Hannibal points out, and Will gives a soft hum in response, eyes ever fixed out into the darkness of the night. “This was purposeful. You never intended to use him.”

“I never intended for _you_ to use him,” Will replies in a low murmur. “I used exactly as much of him as I needed to.”

Hannibal supposes this is as good an answer as any to their discussion from a week ago, what feels like years ago. Like the denial of Peter, Will has denied him, has made clear his decision to leave what they have behind. Why would he stay, when he’s just proven that he doesn’t need what Hannibal can offer him? 

_See? I can do it myself._ Will gloats with the remnants of an eviscerated body. _See? I have no use for you._

He wonders, idly, if Will plans to return to his life as if nothing has transpired here. If he’ll attempt to slip seamlessly back into his marital bed, back into his job and his broken relationships. Back into the expectations of men like Jack Crawford. 

Conversely, Hannibal wants to see the alternative, Will gloriously victorious in his becoming, righteous in his wrath. Perhaps, he hopes, this is a gift and not a punishment, simply Will spreading his wings and learning to _take_ for himself in this regard how he’s already learned how to take from Hannibal and from their life together. 

Hannibal remembers a time before, remembers clearly the twitchy, aggressive, _rude_ man he’d met in Jack’s office. He’d planned the most wonderful tableaux then, his design for Will a thing of beauty worthy of the man. Hannibal would pose him with his arms stretched above his head, crossed at the wrist and tied together with rope, his body pierced with arrows in the tradition of Saint Sebastian. 

He’d remove his eyes, take them for his own consumption and fill the sockets with white chrysanthemum to represent the truth of Will’s vision, his ability to see into the heart of anyone, even Hannibal’s own monster. He’d take his heart as well, slice it thin and eat it raw as he finally consumed that bottle of wine Will had brought to him so long ago. He’d wreathe his head in a crown of brambles and his hips in a belt of sweet williams. In his mouth he’d let spill spring crocus, a testament to his forgiveness and acceptance. 

He studies the set of Will’s jaw, the square of his shoulders; he considers the energy pouring off the empath before him, restless even in his stillness, and wonders if he is regretful of his actions as a whole, or merely because they didn’t evoke as much satisfaction as he might have anticipated. Hannibal won’t react. But he knows, with perfect clarity in that moment, that he will never allow Will to leave him. They wouldn’t survive the separation even if he did permit him to go, both of them destroyed by the absence of their perfect match. Removing Will from the world won’t remove him from Hannibal’s mind palace, won’t separate them for longer than the span of a breath. 

He’ll kill him, if he must. Take him into himself in his entirety, but he wants instead to cross the room to Will, slip behind him and slot their bodies together until he can feel the very blood rushing through Will’s veins. He wants to put his nose to Will’s neck and breathe him in, see if the scent there is contentment or distress. Wants to wrap his arms around Will and assure him that it will be better next time - Hannibal will do whatever he must to make it better for him. A broken piece of him crumbles in his chest, yet refuses to accept that Will is leaving. 

Instead, he eyes the additional glass that has been set out by the open bottle next to the corpse and helps himself. It’s the same vintage Will brought him in Baltimore - perhaps still unopened in the wine cellar in his previous home even now. He’d always waited for the right occasion to share it with the profiler, but the time had never come. It was his intention to serve it with their last meal, before he learned of Will’s betrayal; still considered it, for a moment, and then decided that he didn’t wish to sour a fine wine in such a way.

He brings the glass to his nose, his eyes slipping shut on instinct as he takes in the bouquet before tipping it back and allowing a sample of it to slide over his tongue. He’s very certain to keep his voice neutral when he speaks again. 

“Have you reconsidered leaving, then? Or is the body you left on my kitchen table simply your parting gift?” He tells himself that the question is posed for curiosity’s sake alone; that the very thread of his existence isn’t tethered directly to the one source that could elevate him or cast him aside in equal measure.

 _I do not need Will Graham with me to go on living,_ he reminds himself. _You only need him to survive,_ a deeper, ruthlessly truthful part of him points out.

Even still, he tells himself - mentally, so as to not break the cacophonous silence of the room - that whatever comes next shall be exactly as fate has dictated. Hannibal has long since abandoned aspirations of turning back time, no longer desires anything as banal as piecing together the remnants of a shattered teacup. 

Will is going to choose to stay or go at his own discretion.

Hannibal will keep his beloved with him one way or another.

Will’s eyes finally track from the black of the night to Hannibal’s form across the kitchen, still totally silent even with his lips parted in a grin as he takes another sip of wine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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	2. Landing on Your Feet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath...

Will’s grin is sharp; the jagged edges of broken glass. It is carefree and cruel, capricious in his mocking of Hannibal’s concern as though he should simply  _ know _ the answer to his own question. Will downs the rest of the wine in his glass and sets into motion as though the liquid woke him from stasis. He moves toward the counter that Hannibal himself is leaning against, closing the distance in a meandering prowl as though he intends to take hours crossing the handful of feet between them rather than the seconds they necessitate.

When he finally reaches Hannibal, he keeps inching closer, stepping up to him until they are nearly chest to chest, Will’s bare toes dripping blood onto the tile. Hannibal longs to reach out to him, tightens his grip on his own wine glass and wraps a hand around the edge of the counter behind him instead. Will’s eyes glint in the darkness as though they are lit from within, and when he raises his free hand to draw two fingers across his lips, still tacky with the blood that stains them, the overwhelming iron scent of copper floods Hannibal’s senses.

Instinct pushes him to part his lips, to accept Will’s bloody touch onto his tongue like a sacrament, to take him into his body in any way possible - but Hannibal can smell the drug Will has used on the butcher, laced within the crimson, and abstains from sullying himself with the remnants. One of his own concoctions by the scent of it, and explains the excessive amounts of blood; one of the ingredients is an anticoagulant that would have resulted in severe bleeding from the first sharp cut of Will’s knife. 

Will’s eyes track Hannibal’s movements for the span of a breath, and then he lifts his gaze to meet Hannibal’s. “You want me to stay?” The question is soft, almost pained and, apparently, completely rhetorical. Will doesn’t even grant him a second to reply. “Show me that I  _ need _ you. I obviously have no problem butchering pigs on my own,” his head tilts to the remains of his evening excursion, a sly smirk twisting his lips. He shifts closer still, so when he next speaks their mouths brush together with the shape of every word. “So, find us a wolf to hunt. Perhaps a pack activity will renew my interest.” 

Hannibal can feel the heat of Will as the other man reaches around him and abandons his glass to the counter next to Hannibal’s hand, and every inch of him vibrates with the need to close the distance, to press against the heat source that is the inferno of Will Graham’s body and beg for it to consume him. That feral, mocking grin returns as Will pulls back, his eyebrow arched high as he casts one more lingering glance at Hannibal’s face before turning away and beginning a slow saunter out of the room.

“After all, you  _ did _ advise I find a hobby, Doctor.”

The prospect of a challenge - the opportunity to convince Will to remain with him - has Hannibal’s stomach churning with excitement and intrigue in equal measure, and he finds he is able to name the smile that stretches his lips as one of  _ delight. This _ is the Will Graham he knows, the one he’d fallen in love with; not the moping, apathetic creature that has graced their home for months. The prospect of his return has Hannibal so elated that he doesn’t even mind Will leaving the mess for him to tidy.

\---

In retrospect, Will should have realized far sooner that he misses Hannibal. Not the domesticated, dutiful,  _ husband  _ Hannibal, but the monster beneath the surface. He misses their games, how no two days were ever the same because each day could be their last, could be the day that one of them finally decides they  _ can  _ survive separation, or die trying. 

They will need to leave Cuba soon if things continue to escalate how Will imagines they will. Hannibal didn’t return home for twenty-four hours before he finally brought Will the first list of potential prey, Will systematically denying him each and every one with a mercurial sort of glee. There is something all too enticing about baiting the cannibal, seeing just how far Will can push before Hannibal rips into him. 

Hannibal had left again not long after, this time with something new and hard setting his jaw, a wildly dangerous glint in his eyes and determination etched across his placid, stoic features. It has already been two days - the longest they’ve gone without being together since the fall - and Will is lonely. Right after their convalescence, traveling apart had been deemed much safer than traveling together, their existence still so fresh in the public’s mind. Chiyo fished them from the sea, tended to their wounds as she systematically stole vehicle after vehicle, until they ended somewhere in the Midwest and she left them to their own devices.

Will had gone north to Canada then, and Hannibal south to Mexico, both making ambling journeys that eventually led them east and they rejoined one another in the Florida Keys. From there, Will had sailed them safely to Havana. Will had rarely traveled outside of the country before Hannibal, and since meeting him he’d sailed across the ocean - twice - and had visited half a dozen countries or more. He can’t say he minds it, the thrill of it all, nor the novelty of the experience. 

This separation feels different than that had though; dangerously unstable, like stepping out onto thin, cracked ice and expecting it to hold your weight. He doesn’t know Hannibal’s plan now as he had then, and it thrills something within him to realize how much he’s missed that; the not knowing. He knew this game with Hannibal would be dangerous, but he can’t find it within himself to regret his decision to instigate it if only because, for now, things feel like they are supposed to for the first time in a long while. 

##  \--- 

“Do any of these pigs interest you, darling boy?” 

Hannibal has returned again, from his third hunt in as many weeks. This time he has half a dozen names scrawled neatly across parchment paper with a photo to accompany each. The pages are strewn about the counter Hannibal is currently bent over, Will’s hips rolling fast and deep into him, only partially even paying Hannibal’s research any attention at all. The hot, tight heat of Hannibal is nearly enough to drive Will mad.

Will had abandoned the book he’d been pretending to read, tossing it to the couch in the study without a second thought as soon as he’d heard the distant rumble of the garage door opening. He was on Hannibal the moment he stepped into the kitchen from the attached garage, pinning him to the wall and biting at his lips in a forceful kiss, tearing at the man’s clothing and only nipping at him harder when the urge to demand he not leave again nearly sprung from Will’s lips. 

Will still isn’t ready to admit that he misses Hannibal when he is away. That, perhaps, he’s made a mistake by goading the other man into a fruitless hunt. It isn’t the  _ same _ if they don’t do it together; if they aren’t sending unworthy prey after one another only to relish in their victory once their enemies have been overcome. 

He can remember a time before all of this, before Cuba or the fall or Muskrat Farm. All the way back to a hotel room in Minnesota when he’d first consumed a part of Hannibal. When he’d taken his offering and nourished himself with it, the darkness taking root within him. Their shared darkness. It has only grown since then, into something wild and unruly; not even Will can control it anymore, Hannibal no longer able to pull the puppet strings.

Jack had asked Will, once, in the early stages of their planning to take Hannibal down, whether it bothered him what Hannibal had done to them. Whether he regretted ever accepting a place at Hannibal Lecter’s table. Will hadn’t been able to bring himself to tell Jack Crawford, good and just, though considerably shortsighted man that he was, that the cannibalism had been the least offensive thing Hannibal had ever done to him. 

Getting Will to fall for him;  _ that _ had been the cruelest joke of all. 

“Tell me,” Will demands, his voice rough and wrecked, as though  _ he _ were the one getting railed against the counter rather than the nearly silent man beneath him. Hannibal’s unerring composure, that’s another thing far more offensive than forced cannibalism. How can he possibly remain so stoic when Will feels as though he is hurtling uncontrollably into the black emptiness of space? He grits his teeth as Hannibal’s hole clenches around him, swallowing down the pleased groan perched beneath his chin as he fucks into that tight heat, their skin sliding slick against each other with the olive oil he’d hurriedly prepared Hannibal with each time their hips meet. “I want to know why each of them caught your eye, gained your ire. Tell me about them.”

One of Hannibal’s hands leaves the position that has him braced against the cool granite and flits over to a mugshot he’d printed out. “This one has been brought in multiple times for sexual assault but has somehow always slipped away without conviction. I’ve seen him stalking some of the bars, his hand slipping often to the pocket he keeps a stash of Rohypnol in.” When Will doesn’t respond, Hannibal turns his attention to a polaroid, obviously taken himself, pulling it closer. “Gutierrez steals from tourists, any cash he can, and any possessions he manages to get his greedy hands on he sells for a premium rate at his pawnshop to the same tourists he steals from.”

“A rapist and a thief,” Will summarizes, his tone unendingly unimpressed. “This is all you’ve brought me? I thought you weren’t a  _ vigilante, _ Hannibal?” 

Hannibal persists, his fingers still laid along the edge of Guitierrez’s photo. “He caused a scene at brunch yesterday morning with his shouting and then he struck the woman sitting with him when she accidentally dropped one of the tamales he’d purchased from a street vendor on the ground. After, he kicked at a stray dog that dared attempt to retrieve the lost food for himself.” The smirk that plays at Hannibal’s lips is far too taunting for a man being fucked against his own kitchen counter.

Will gives a huff and slams forcefully once more into Hannibal, stills deep inside him as he drapes his body along the line of Hannibal’s back. One of his hands remains digging into Hannibal’s hip with excessive force, while the other twines into Hannibal’s soft, sun-bleached locks and twists harshly, yanking his head up until Will’s lips are at his ear.

“I’m not the fucking  _ Chesapeake Ripper,” _ he hisses lowly, arching Hannibal’s head back even further still. “I don’t kill the  _ rude.” _

“You killed the butcher,” Hannibal points out without pause, voice strained with the way his throat is stretched in Will’s grasp.

“I only killed the butcher so you  _ couldn’t.” _ Will releases his hold then, pushing Hannibal back down to the counter forcibly. He rears up again, tilting Hannibal’s hips up slightly and then resumes fucking into him relentlessly, gritting out a cold  _ don’t come _ as he hits Hannibal’s prostate again and again as punishment.

It is so tempting to just give in, to accept any and all pigs Hannibal brings to him for slaughter and praise the man for his work. But he isn’t looking for a  _ pig. _ A pig will only satisfy a base urge, only soothe the incensing simmer beneath his skin for so long. Will doesn’t want a  _ hunt, _ he wants a  _ battle. _ He wants to square off with a fearsome foe and wonder, even if only for a moment, that maybe even the two of them might not be enough. He wants an opponent that is worthy of the combined terror of Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter. He wants to leave with less than he came with - maybe not to the extent of their battle with the Dragon, but minus a few ounces of blood between them at least.

Pigs are boring. Pigs are  _ safe. _ Will wants someone that can and  _ will _ fight back. A wolf to take down that will prove Hannibal needs him just as much as  _ he _ needs  _ Hannibal. _

_ He hates how much he needs Hannibal. _

He pushes in once more, hips slamming loud and obscene against Hannibal’s slick ass, and then he grinds insistently against Hannibal until he finds the edge of his release and throws himself from it; hurtles into pleasure just as carelessly as he’d tumbled them both into the sea. The only difference now being that Hannibal doesn’t join him, isn’t wrapped so tightly around Will that they might be a single entity, doesn’t take the plunge and revel in the fall.

Hannibal is too respectful for that. Too  _ good.  _ Too willing to obey Will’s cruel commands. 

Will pulls away as he starts to come, watching milky ropes simultaneously coat the round swell of Hannibal’s ass and slip from his red, abused hole and wonders why the fall didn’t seem quite as high, quite as fulfilling, when he’d braved it alone.

\--- 

Hannibal has never truly felt desperation in his long life, but he feels as though he is close to it now. It has been nearly two months of hunting and Will has rejected every potential prey subject each time Hannibal returns to him. It is with a growing sense of dread that Hannibal starts to believe each new return home could be his last. That one day he’ll walk into their villa and Will simply won’t be  _ there. _

It seems today won’t be the day Will leaves, as the empath is sprawled across the couch in their study, a book open across his chest as he sleeps. It never ceases to amaze Hannibal that Will  _ knows him,  _ arguably better than Hannibal knows himself in many regards, and yet the man still feels comfortable enough to show his exposed belly, to bare his neck to Hannibal’s monster. To  _ sleep  _ within the nest of a fellow predator. 

Hannibal can’t risk a fourth failure, doesn’t appreciate the feelings that come along with each new refusal from Will. He can’t find a way to placate Will, to make him stay while playing by the empath’s rules, so he turns to a course of action that is as familiar to him as breathing, one which he told himself he wouldn’t resort to any longer where Will is concerned: he twists the situation into one that benefits his desires.

_ He calls Freddie Lounds.  _

“Miss Lounds. Do forgive the late call. You’ll understand, of course, that we must keep this brief.” Hannibal can hear silence spread out across the line, can hear the plastic  _ click  _ of Freddie’s manicured nails pressing against the record button of her infamous recorder, and when she replies it is through the tinny, distant sound of speakerphone.

“Doctor Lecter. I’m surprised to hear from you. How’s your vacation?” He hears the scratch of a pen against paper, wonders at what notes she could possibly be taking as of yet, and smiles. 

“The  _ murder husbands  _ are doing splendidly. However, I believe it’s time for a change of scenery. Perhaps you can assist with letting the appropriate channels know you’ve heard from me.” 

Hannibal glances down at his watch, notes the passing of the second hand as it rotates to a full minute. There are logistics, he is sure. Paths of reward or consequence that Freddie is treading down in her mind, calculating the risk versus the promise of that reward. How likely is she to piss off Hannibal Lecter if she refuses? How likely is she to be arrested if she doesn’t?

Ultimately, it seems, she weighs Hannibal as the far greater risk. “I’m sure this will be  _ front-page  _ news, Doctor.” Freddie’s voice is full of greed, even in the face of her fear. He can imagine her eyes, dollar signs comically replacing her pupils as she considers the payout she’ll receive for a story like this one. 

“Good,” Hannibal pauses, listening to the strained sounds of her breathing and the rustle of the paper she is writing on. “Don’t take too many liberties, Miss Lounds. Your life was spared once before, I suggest you don’t disappoint again. Luck, as they say, doesn’t often strike a second time.” Freddie does an admirable job of making no sounds to indicate her distress, but Hannibal can remember vividly the way her skin flushed and her eyes dilated in a truly lovely fear response the first time he’d truly shown her a brief glimpse beneath his person suit. 

He waits while she collects herself, finally letting out a puff of air that sounds like acceptance, a bright, venom-laced smile in her voice when she finally speaks again. “It’s always so rewarding to be proven  _ right,  _ Hannibal. I owe you a debt of gratitude for that. I’m happy to repay it with a story worthy of you. Of  _ both  _ of you. I’m sure your  _ fans  _ will love hearing of your whereabouts and status. In, say, a week’s time?” 

“Very well, Miss Lounds. And do be sure to tell dear uncle Jack we’re terribly sorry we missed him, but we’ve found the humidity of Havana a bit  _ stifling, _ and are keen to move on.  _ Together.”  _

\---

Will can nearly taste Hannibal’s desperation in the air, heavy and threatening enough to choke him. When he’d originally given Hannibal his task he hadn’t expected  _ this _ to be the outcome, hadn’t anticipated the lengths Hannibal would go to or how dolorous the man would become. He isn’t yet willing to admit that his experiment has failed, isn’t even truly certain that it  _ has  _ failed, which means he simply needs to proceed with a  _ Plan B. _

It is late enough at night that the moon is full and high overhead, the light spilling in through the open, curtainless windows. One perk of living on the ocean is the near constant breeze and the loveliness of the light reflecting off the water. It had been a night just like this one, almost exactly two months ago, when Will had told Hannibal what he expected of him; when he’d presented him with a punishment and a gift wrapped in the same ribbon. 

The butcher had been part taunt, to show Hannibal that Will is capable without him, that Will can take anything Hannibal wants whenever he likes, and also part promise. He’d hoped Hannibal would see through the obviousness of the provocation and into the true heart of the matter, into Will’s heart. Will has accepted himself, had accepted his place in Hannibal’s life and the doctor’s place in his even before he’d tossed them into the sea. But, so it seems, Hannibal has yet to catch up. 

It is well past midnight, past any time Hannibal would have expected Will to come calling upon him for pleasures of the flesh, when Will sheds his clothes down to his boxers and slips into Hannibal’s room on quiet feet. Even with as silent as he manages to be, Hannibal hears him, a predator far too accustomed to sleeping light and watching its neck to ever be caught unawares. 

“Will?” Will smiles at the sleep-soft sound of Hannibal’s voice, crossing the room in a few steady strides and sliding beneath the cool silk sheets, pressing himself to Hannibal’s side as the other man turns onto his back to see Will better. 

_ “Shh.  _ Go back to sleep, Hannibal. Just feeling restless tonight and I wanted to sleep here,” he doesn’t ask if that is okay, doesn’t need to be told Hannibal will accept him into his bed because he knows Hannibal always will. 

As expected, Hannibal doesn’t reply, he simply wraps his arm around Will and, when Will doesn’t respond negatively, squeezes ever so slightly to pull him closer against his body. 

Will doesn’t sleep right away; he listens as Hannibal’s breathing slowly evens back out and his grip lessens just a little in sleep. He stares at the profile of his lover, of the man who holds the title of his best friend, his mortal enemy, and the love of his life all in one neat, Hannibal-shaped package. He reminisces on their time together thus far, from that first meeting until breakfast just this morning and realizes, with a certainty he hasn’t felt since the cliff, that he loves this man. And that, perhaps, it isn’t just the thrill or the danger of knowing Hannibal that he’s missed. Maybe it is just the easy way they’d once had with one another. When a hand to his shoulder was soothing rather than threatening, when Hannibal’s voice wasn’t the only voice he heard in the cacophonous bone arena of his skull, but rather an encouraging and supportive sound. 

He isn’t sure if this final play will work, but he has to try  _ something. _ Forming a level of intimacy with the doctor that isn’t shrouded in sex and passion will hopefully be the key to soothing the stalking, agitated, beast within Hannibal. So he cuddles closer to the slumbering monster and considers the future. 

He looks at Hannibal’s face, slackened in sleep, and wonders when everything had all gone wrong and how he can possibly put them right again.

\--- 

For three nights, Hannibal enjoys the new constant of Will pressed against him while they sleep. On the fourth night, he begins to grow suspicious. On the fifth night, he is certain Will is playing him - to what end, Hannibal doesn’t know, but there is only one reason that Will would come calling upon him so consistently with little to no physical intimacy involved. 

Will is playing some sort of game - the sort where he doesn’t bother to tell Hannibal the rules or even that they are playing. It is reminiscent of the days  _ before;  _ before that night in Baltimore, before that night in Italy, before that night in Wolf Trap.

Before, before, before.

It makes Hannibal feel a sprig of zest he thought long since snuffed out, makes him feel hopeful for the first time since they settled in Havana and Will took up the bottle as a means to avoid any sort of constructive thought.

A manipulation it is, almost rudely blatant, but Hannibal is growing more and more familiar with Will’s manipulations. Namely, he knows that if Will is attempting to twist his way into Hannibal’s head and heart, he still  _ cares _ enough to do so. And  _ that _ particular element decreases the chances of Will vanishing into thin air significantly; which, in turn, lowers the hackles Hannibal has drawn up in defense of his own heart.

Perhaps he needn’t be quite as on guard as he has previously presumed. Perhaps, in fact, his phone call to a certain reporter had been a tad impulsive and careless. He doesn’t  _ regret _ the path he’s taken or where his actions are leading them, of course; there is very little in the world that Hannibal Lecter truly regrets. But he  _ does _ need to alter the facts that surround his decision and, by association, alter the potential consequences of what he has done.

There was always going to be an element of anger; that, Hannibal knows, had been unavoidable the moment Miss Lounds was pulled into the picture. Will detests her, and will not take kindly to Hannibal’s own manipulations where she is involved. There may even be a note of betrayal, with Will wondering why Hannibal would sabotage the life they have built in this place - not that Will is taking anything resembling full advantage of that life or, even, seems particularly  _ invested  _ in it as of late.

What is even more frustrating is the fact that there is an equally likely chance that Will might react with  _ amusement. That old Hannibal, _ Will might chuckle darkly with a fond shake of his head,  _ up to his old tricks again. _

And that’s the rub, isn’t it?

For all his grand machinations, for all the time Hannibal spends analyzing situations and calculating probabilities, the moment  _ Will Graham _ becomes a known factor in them, every plan, every presumed eventuality or mused possibility is thrown right out of the window. The only true constant in Hannibal’s life, he has found, is that the love of it is consistently inconsistent. Untamed, unplanned, unpredictable  _ Will. _

For this reason, and this reason alone, it is almost  _ easy _ for Hannibal to surrender the reins of his stratagem to the Universe, to allow the next events to unfold entirely as they are meant to, without further interference or worry from him.

On the sixth night - the sixth night of Will slipping into Hannibal’s bed without invitation or explanation and, coincidentally, the sixth night since Hannibal had journeyed to the outskirts of Havana at nearly two in the morning to place a call to Baltimore - Hannibal allows his facial muscles to pull into a sleepy smile as his arms twist around the man next to him, tugging him closer against his chest. He molds his body to the line of Will’s own, presses back to chest and ass to groin, legs tangled together with Hannibal’s face buried in a mop of unruly curls that have no right being so  _ soft. _

He holds Will against him, and the anticipation he’d expected to feel over any potential falling out the following day shrivels to dust and drifts away on the breeze of sleep that seizes them.

\---

Will is out in public - alone, thankfully - when he first catches a glimpse of it, and his first reaction is, irritatingly enough, that he’s impressed Freddie Lounds has managed to get her trash all the way across the straits, into a country not known for its love of American news, just to continue tormenting him.

He wonders how much she’d ended up selling the story for, certain that the seedy-looking Cuban tabloid would have been happy to pay top dollar for an article that will incite the locals and tourists alike to buy, buy, buy.  _ Extra, extra, read all about it: Cannibals in Cuba! Are YOU At Risk? _

The headline is distinctly  _ Freddie, _ but he’s certain the husband/honeymoon angle wasn’t exactly discouraged in the least by Hannibal - he always  _ has _ been amused and, sickeningly enough, oddly endeared by the term  _ Murder Husbands. _

He knows, of course, that Hannibal is at fault here. Freddie Lounds is a nuisance, and Will might even begrudgingly call her  _ intelligent,  _ but even  _ she _ isn’t good enough to find them on her own. He wonders when Hannibal had felt desperate enough to do this. Before Will began to slip into his bed every night? After?

His next emotion, also one that chafes incredibly, is a sick sense of gratitude that Freddie has at least done him the favor of using his mugshot from when he’d been admitted to the BSHCI; long, shaggy curls, too thin with a sickly, pale sheen to his skin. A face that was still pretty and unmarred. Will doubts that, even with him standing right next to the front page article in the middle of the street, hardly a soul would give him a second glance or consideration, nor ever assume the two of them were the same man.

_ HONEYMOON OF HORROR; MURDER HUSBANDS SPOTTED IN HAVANA _

He grabs a copy and makes his way home, relieved and also not when the vendor doesn’t even bother to look up at him as the exchange takes place. If he doesn’t notice Will, Will doesn’t have to worry about killing the man to tie up any loose ends. Funny, how the idea of Hannibal and himself  _ not _ covered in blood and in their element is oddly disappointing. 

\---

“What did you promise her to convince her to help you?” Will accuses with a disdainful snarl. He hadn't given Hannibal time to prepare for his wrath when he’d arrived home from his walk, had simply located him in their study, a half-completed sketch of the National Capitol Building in Havana laid out on the drawing table in front of him, and pounced. 

“Her life.” Hannibal replies simply, no feigned confusion as to what Will is referring to, nor any attempt at argument or denial. Will isn’t surprised in the least.

“You overpaid, then,” Will growls when that manages to pull a small huff of laughter from Hannibal. “I never intended to leave you, Hannibal.” Will steps closer, his body radiating heat as he puts his palm to Hannibal’s cheek. He recalls, vaguely, a seminar during his undergrad program where the professor had claimed killers ran hotter than the average human. It brings a small smile to his own lips now, and he watches the tension in Hannibal’s jaw and shoulders slowly drain away. The instinct to rub his face against Hannibal’s, to pull him closer until their bodies are touching is nearly unignorable. He wants him; horribly and terribly. 

“So this was all just a cruel manipulation?” Hannibal’s words should sound accusatory, but the grin on his face is anything but. He is  _ proud. _

It is time, Will decides. Time for them to leave Cuba and time for them to get back onto the same page. Will is going to show Hannibal his design and then they’ll move on.  _ Together. _

“Come, let me show you exactly how  _ fond  _ I am. I’m not going anywhere Hannibal. Neither of us are, remember? We couldn’t survive.” 

\---

Hannibal can only barely conceal his surprise and confusion when Will parks the car in front of a nondescript warehouse several miles outside of the city. It is in an old industrial park that has clearly been abandoned, most likely previously used for nefarious purposes. Perhaps it still is used for such purposes.

What can his dear mongoose possibly have planned for them  _ here?  _

Will removes a large copper-colored key from his pocket, unlocks the shining padlock that has no business securing such a rusted out building, and slides the door open; the muscles in his arms flex beautifully, his skin cast in an eerie glow from the yellow halogen lights mounted to the building. The stench of death, the sweet, cloying scent of decay, greets them immediately, and Hannibal breathes deeply and watches Will’s profile as the man’s cheeks lift in a smile, throwing his scar into sharp contrast. The smell of blood is thick as they walk further inside, and not all of it fresh.

He doesn’t ask any questions; he knows Will is prepared to tell him when he’s ready. All things would be revealed on Will’s own time, just as the younger man likes it. He follows his lover inside, taking in their surroundings with the bright, aware eyes of a predator on the hunt.

Several feet into the warehouse Hannibal looks  _ up,  _ a shadow cast on the ground in the center of the building prompting his exploratory gaze. It is a man - or,  _ was _ \- hung with his arms splayed wide in a perversion of the crucifixion pose, and connected on either side to an elevated second-floor walkway that circles the entire room. 

The body of an adult, human male contains roughly twenty-two feet of intestines, and it appears every inch of this one’s has been used to wrap around the strong wires that hold the man aloft by his wrists, draped almost lovingly over the metal. 

His legs have been bound in a white burial shroud, tightly enough that they appear melded together into one appendage, almost like a creature emerging from a chrysalis. His ribcage is cracked open, his brain sits tucked against his open stomach in the bloody, open space. 

“I took his tongue since it was clear you found him tasteless,” Will speaks from somewhere behind him, pulling Hannibal back to the present moment. He doesn’t turn to him, can’t possibly take his eyes from the effigy in front of him. It is  _ beautiful.  _

As they get closer he is able to see the man’s heart hanging from his throat like a ruby necklace, and finally he is able to see the face. The face of the man who’d interrupted his brunch -  _ Gutierrez. _

“What  _ have _ you been up to,  _ mylimasis?”  _ Hannibal is careful to avoid the pools of blood that have dripped down to the concrete from the empty shell of a creature above them, taking it all in as he walks around the display to see the back. 

The man’s skin has been flayed and, if the bleeding and the bruising that he can just make out from this distance are anything to go by, his skin was cut off in strips while he was still alive. It’s a mockery of wings, as though they were plucked from his very flesh, leaving him grounded though still suspended by his guts alone. 

“Every single pig you brought me I hunted and brought here. I killed them all, harvested the best parts of them and stored them here for you. I’d planned on us having a lavish dinner, the sort I know you miss from Baltimore. But it seems you’ve thrown a bit of a wrench into those plans, haven’t you? You impatient, ridiculous man. Did you ever truly believe I could  _ leave _ you?” Will places a hand to Hannibal’s shoulder before drifting to the side of the room, a large industrial size standing freezer sits along the far wall, humming softly in the near silence of the room. 

Each lonely, quiet night that Hannibal had spent awake in his empty bed, wondering if Will would return to him; every time he’d heard the sounds of movement, the soft rustle of socked feet against their wooden floors as dawn began to break over Havana. Each of those moments were a victorious return for his Will, the hunter coming back to his nest after a successful hunt. Returning to his mate after providing for them both.

It lights something within Hannibal’s chest on fire, an inferno blazing through him as he looks to Will, to the crucified man and to the freezer.

“You never cease to surprise me, Will. Each day with you is new and invigorating. Trying and failing to figure you out has been the highlight of my life,” Hannibal knows he might be waxing a bit poetic, but he can hardly be blamed when Will brings forth any number of feelings in him in unpredictable ways, feelings he’s never even known himself capable of. A life of control, contained carefully within a person suit, seems trite and dull in comparison to the unpredictable surprise and awe of living a life  _ with _ Will Graham. He would sooner live his life blindfolded, trusting only Will to guide his steps, than be sure-footed without him.

“Tell me about them,” Hannibal mirrors Will’s request from weeks ago, and the image of himself bent over his kitchen counter brings an even wider smile to his lips. He slots his body against Will’s back, shielding himself from the cold that pours from the open freezer with Will’s blazing heat. His hands find Will’s slender hips as if drawn to them magnetically and he hooks his chin over Will’s shoulder and gazes at his love’s well-earned boon, their stores bountiful and lovely to behold. “Please,” he tacks on softly; he likes to think the shiver that runs the length of Will’s spine has more to do with Hannibal’s lips brushing against the shell of his ear than the atmospheric conditions.

Will reaches into the depths of the freezer and skims his fingers across the packages stacked within; the warmth of his skin leaving trails along the frost-covered plastic. Hannibal’s heart beats a little faster as he observes the tender, almost reverent caresses Will bestows upon his trophies, fingers trailing mere seconds behind Hannibal’s own trajectory.

“What is it you’d like me to tell you?” Will responds in a thoughtful murmur, as though he were posing the question more to himself than Hannibal. “How easy it was to snatch life away from the pigs that didn’t deserve to have it? How cleansing it felt to bathe my hands in their blood? How the only sound lovelier than the gasping, wailing cries of my lambs was the silence that followed in the wake of their death?”

Will plucks up one of frozen packages; in the dim light shining from the freezer, Hannibal can see that it is a liver. Even frozen it is plainly a perfect specimen, untouched by the poison of alcohol or rot of disease. Hannibal feels his chest swell with pride and wonders if Will has been particularly careful about the meat he’s harvested. Wonders if he took his time extracting it, inspecting it, painfully aware that any flaw could be spotted by Hannibal the moment it was presented to him.

“Would you like me to tell you where each piece came from? I know every one, of course. Know who it came from and why, and precisely how long it took me to carve it out of them. I wouldn’t presume to impose on your territory when it comes to the menu, but I must admit that a specific dish or two  _ did _ cross my mind as I worked.”

He replaces the organ, slotting it back into its rightful place along with the rest of the frozen fare, nudging the door shut with his foot as he turns in Hannibal’s grasp. Will’s face is shrouded in shadows without the meager bulb in the freezer to brighten it, but even so Hannibal can see the way his pupils are blown out, can detect a trace of color gracing Will’s cheeks and creeping down his neck. The hand he raises to Hannibal’s cheek is the same that had been dancing through the freezer, and even though his fingers are stiff and frigid, Hannibal tilts into his touch, warmed by it.

“Do you want me to tell you about the remorse I feel? How guilt sat heavy and sick in my gut not because I’d ended a life, but because I’d chosen to do it  _ alone?” _

Hannibal’s blood thrums violently at the admission, something thick clogging his throat when he tries to speak. “Will -”

“I missed you,” Will continues, unphased by Hannibal’s interruption, his voice as soft as the caress he graces Hannibal’s jaw with. “All of you. For years I’d thought I wanted you bloody and broken, and for a while it was… Well. There was a perverse sense of justice about it. Something sick and satisfying. But when the pieces came back together you felt...different. I found myself longing for what we had before, and I knew no other way to go about getting it back except for just... _ making _ it happen.” Will’s lips twitch into a grin, not the menacing or cruel mockery of a smile that has graced his face for so many months, but something bright.  _ Hopeful. _

“But you know all about that, don’t you?” Will taunts, grin turning even more vicious. 

He  _ does. _ Hannibal has spent the majority of his life - and nearly the entirety of his relationship with Will - bending circumstances to his liking. Turning the cogs, tugging the strings,  _ controlling. _ Since the fall, he’s made an effort to relinquish the habit, concerned that yet  _ more _ manipulation would be the final act that drove Will away for good. He’d had no idea that just the opposite had been true all along, nor how much he’d missed the curiosity that accompanies his machinations until he’d placed the phone call to Freddie Lounds.

Hannibal does the only thing he can possibly consider doing when faced with such a revelation: he falls to his knees in front of Will Graham and works on unbuttoning his jeans. He has them yanked down just below Will’s ass, exposing his cock to Hannibal’s hungry gaze, before Will even has a chance to respond. 

His lips are wrapped around the head, tonguing along his foreskin until he can pull it back and expose him, relishing in the taste of a late night, an early morning and a hectic day without a shower. He savors Will in all of his many forms and states, with pleasure and fervor, always. 

“Fuck, Hannibal,” Will breathes out through his teeth, the sound sharp and surprised as he leans heavily against the freezer behind him, his knuckles gone white where he grips tightly to the metal. Hannibal grins around where he holds Will in his mouth, sliding his lips fully down Will’s shaft and letting his tongue just barely tease at the base and against his balls. 

He can happily remain, just like this, with Will worshipfully tucked in his throat forever, but he supposes they have pressing matters to attend to in the form of a fiery, scarlet-haired nuisance that he has, perhaps a bit prematurely, granted a blanket pardon to. So it is with a single-minded purpose that Hannibal sucks Will down, bobbing his head enthusiastically along Will’s cock, his tongue lavishing attention to the underside of his shaft each time he pulls away. 

Will doesn’t try to stop him or influence his pace in any way, simply remains leaning against the freezer with his groin exposed to all of Hannibal’s worshipful fervor. Hannibal desperately wants to show his appreciation to Will with a slow, attentive blow job, but there isn’t time.

There will be time however, later, to do this properly. There will be hours, days,  _ years _ for him to lay Will out; to study, memorize and worship every inch of him. To make sure that no dip, curve or freckle exists without Hannibal having laid eyes upon it.

His hands fall to Will’s strong thighs and rest gently there; Hannibal can feel the spasmic tensing and twitching tick of the muscles beneath them, can feel the fine tremor that begins slowly and then grows as Will is drawn closer and closer to release by Hannibal’s mouth alone.

Will curses again when Hannibal slides a hand around to cup his balls, fondling them gently before giving them a teasing tug. He doesn’t warn Hannibal that he’s reached the edge of his pleasure, not that he would ever need to, Hannibal smelling it and  _ feeling it _ , he merely buries his own hands in Hannibal’s hair, his fingers twisting harshly into silky locks, and holds Hannibal’s head still. He jerks his hips once, twice, deep into the welcoming cavern of Hannibal’s throat and then spills his release within him with a guttural groan.

Before Hannibal can pull back, Will’s fingers go firm in his hair and keep him held against his groin, his cock softening slowly against Hannibal’s tongue. Will’s eyes are dark and dangerous as he gazes down at Hannibal knelt between his thighs, a god looking down upon his dutiful supplicant. “Why don’t you just stay right there, Hannibal. We have a lot to discuss and we both know I prefer you silent and obedient for that.” 

\---

Hannibal brings Will back to his boat,  _ their boat,  _ for a last goodbye. He knows Will is sentimental enough that he’d want to stand inside the vessel that had brought them safely from America and to their new future together one last time before leaving it for good. When they’d first arrived in Cuba, Will had been anxious to leave the safety they’d woven for themselves, the peace their sanctum had provided them. With a little coaxing, Hannibal had finally been able to convince Will to accompany him to shore, to start their new life in earnest. 

Will has visited the boat frequently in all the time they’ve spent in Havana, taking it out for fishing and sometimes just to be on the sea. It seems the man has returned a bit to the roots of his youth: boatyards and sailing and the open water. 

Even Hannibal is forced to admit he will miss this when they are gone. It has acted as a makeshift chrysalis for the two of them to evolve and grow closer together while also providing them the security they needed in order to  _ clear the air  _ between them. In the early days Will had always been angry, furious at Hannibal for his machinations, and on a quest for answers from God, from fate, from the ocean itself.  _ Why had they survived? What did Hannibal even see in him? What was next?  _ And Hannibal had wanted to reply to each posited question, to silence the chaos and confusion reverberating through Will’s brain:  _ Because there was no other alternative. He saw companionship, an equal in all things, an end to his loneliness. Everything.  _

Will has never been lovelier than he is as he comes out of the small shower room tucked into the corner of the boat, fully nude and dripping water from his wet curls, his skin flushed an appealing shade of pink from the trapped heat. 

He slinks towards Hannibal like a lion on the prowl, mouth held in a wicked smirk as his eyes never leave Hannibal’s face. When he finally reaches Hannibal he rubs their cheeks together, an animalistic habit to mark territory, and it brings a smile to Hannibal’s lips.

“I was never going to leave you,” Will repeats the same words from the warehouse as he kisses down Hannibal’s neck, nipping at his collarbones as he works the buttons of his shirt open, letting the soft fabric hang loosely from Hannibal’s shoulders while his hand moves down to Hannibal’s hip, squeezing gently. 

“So you’ve said,” Hannibal’s smile grows wide and honest, though his pulse remains steady where Will presses his lips to his throat, teasing at the blood-warm skin. 

“How do you always manage to be so calm and poised?” Will’s fingers come up to replace his lips against Hannibal’s pulse, his eyes catching Hannibal’s gaze as the other man smirks at him. 

“It’s simple control, Will. I am unaffected by my environment.” A blatant lie that Will is quick to dispel, the hand on Hannibal’s hip now moving to brush against his cock, thickening in his pants already. 

“Is that so?  _ Unaffected,  _ huh? I wouldn’t really consider  _ this  _ unaffected,” Will grips harder at Hannibal’s erection through his slacks, making quick work of his button and zipper so he can slide his hand inside to tease him through his underwear. Hannibal groans, unable to stop the sound from slipping from his throat as Will presses even closer. He is all around Hannibal, filling up his eyes, his space, his nose, and his throat; all of his senses overwhelmed. He wants nothing more than to lay Will out and worship him as he deserves. To show him with actions exactly how he feels for him. 

_ “Aš tave myliu,”  _ Hannibal hadn’t intended to slip into his mother tongue, but Will makes him desperate, forcing all concrete thought from his mind. 

“Back at ya. Now let me show you exactly  _ how much.” _ Will’s grin is dangerous but lovely, and Hannibal allows him to guide them to the small mattress at the back of the boat. 

Hannibal’s knees buckle slightly as his legs meet the bed, Will’s palm, spread wide over Hannibal’s breastbone, solid but not insistent, just enough pressure for his body to follow the suggestion of falling to the mattress behind him. He crawls backwards until he is sprawled properly down the length of it, Will following in tandem, shifting on hands and knees and crawling up Hannibal’s body until he is straddling his still-clothed hips.

Will bends low, brushing his lips over Hannibal’s, licking into his mouth as soon as Hannibal’s own part for him. Hannibal is helpless but to meet Will’s tongue, sighing into the kiss even as Will lets out a soft growl.

“You’re wearing too many clothes, baby,” Will murmurs as his mouth traverses the line of Hannibal’s jaw.

Hannibal’s stomach gives a pleasurable twist at the term of endearment, his cock all the harder and  _ aching _ for Will’s touch. “Someone pinned me to the bed before I had a chance to correct that,” he points out, his hands finding the warm, slightly damp skin of Will’s waist and holding him in place against him despite his words.

Will hums softly as his lips trail down Hannibal’s throat, across his chest. “What’s to be done about that?” 

He pushes away the fabric that still hangs loosely around Hannibal’s frame, and Hannibal shifts his shoulders and arms to wiggle out of it, arching his back as Will tugs the garment away completely. He lifts his hips obediently when Will’s hands fall to the band of his trousers, his lover quick to yank pants and briefs alike down in one fell swoop, freeing Hannibal’s erection. He doesn’t bother pulling either past Hannibal’s knees, resulting in Hannibal awkwardly shifting and kicking the clothes off the rest of the way himself as Will rears up and kneels on either side of Hannibal’s hips.

Sharp blue eyes meet Hannibal’s as Will wraps a hand around him, first simply gripping Hannibal’s cock as though to test the weight of it in his palm, and then squeezing lightly and dragging his grip down Hannibal’s shaft, slow as molasses. 

“You’ve been longing to get inside me since that first time,” Will accuses as he strokes Hannibal’s cock.

“I’ve longed to be inside you from the moment I  _ saw _ you,” Hannibal corrects him, unabashed to be laying all of his cards out on the table. As far as he’s concerned, he’d laid them all out for Will’s viewing  _ years _ ago.

“You thought you’d never get another chance,” Will observes, his tone almost bored as he works Hannibal languidly.

“I feared you would leave me, yes,” Hannibal admits, for he is long past the misconception of having the ability to keep  _ anything _ from his marvellous, brilliant Will.

Will’s hand stills as he shifts his body, leans over to the nightstand at the side of the bed and retrieves a bottle of lube from the top drawer. Hannibal wonders when he had managed to purchase it and stash it there. They hadn’t had a chance to become physically intimate any of the times they’d inhabited this boat together, strung out on pain medication and patched up as they were in the beginning, and Will so often distracted and distant the handful of other times Hannibal had journeyed to the boat with him since. The intimacy hadn’t come until later; until they’d found the villa, felt safe. Safe  _ from _ everyone else just as much as safe  _ with _ each other.

_ “Hm,”  _ Will tilts his head like a curious animal, eyes intense as he stares down at Hannibal. Hannibal is content to have Will settled above him, something searingly warm and thrumming with energy settling at the base of his spine as he thinks about Will unabashedly  _ taking  _ his pleasure. Just like he’d done in the warehouse, and in nearly every interaction they’d had since the fall. He imagines Will feels he has a lot that is  _ due  _ to him, a lot to make up for. 

“We should leave,” Hannibal attempts to speak, his throat clicking and his mouth falling closed when Will scoots back enough that he brushes against Hannibal’s cock where he holds it behind himself. When the tip of his head slips between Will’s thighs, between his cheeks, Hannibal can feel that he is already wet and slightly open, clearly having prepared himself in the shower. 

He moans at the sensation, watching as Will positions himself over Hannibal’s cock. There is no delay; Will takes Hannibal into his body, just the head of his cock, and lets it stretch him further, the look of a pleased cat upon his features. 

“We should do a lot of things,” Will points out in a murmur as he slowly lowers his hips. “We should turn ourselves in. We should die. We should stop killing. We should kill  _ more.”  _ Will pauses, settling himself fully upon Hannibal with a sigh, a soft smile curling his lips - one of the most genuine expressions Hannibal has ever been graced with by his lover. Will lays a palm over his chest; as much, Hannibal thinks, to provide balance as to feel the thundering of Hannibal’s heart beneath it as his usual level of control begins to rapidly wane.

“We should get married,” Hannibal interrupts breathlessly. He’s not certain if he intends it as a statement of truth, or as a means to cease Will’s tirade, but the words fall effortlessly from him. 

As is typical of his Will, he surprises Hannibal by laughing; a high and bright sound. "We’re already more than  _ married,  _ Hannibal,” the word falls off of his tongue as though the entire concept of such a thing is a joke to him, so  _ normal  _ and  _ trivial; _ as though he hadn’t recently tried to make just such a concept work with  _ someone else. _

“We’re  _ conjoined.  _ Can’t get much closer than that. Our entire relationship has been an extended courtship. The dance with the Dragon, our consummation. There's been enough blood between us to soak our marriage bed a dozen times over. In what sense are we not already united, Hannibal, when we’ve latched ourselves together in all the ways that matter the most?" Will moves as he speaks, circling his hips and taking more of Hannibal into his body, his grip on Hannibal’s chest turning harsh and soft in equal measures. 

“Legally. I want you as mine in the eyes of God and man,” Hannibal moves his hands to Will’s hips, squeezing against the flesh of his too slender frame, a wicked smile on his own lips. 

“In the eyes of  _ Jack Crawford _ more like. You just want to taunt the man, peacock me around. You want to erase the fact that I tried to make myself a family that wasn’t  _ you. _ You don’t care about God, Hannibal. In your world, you  _ are  _ God,” Will teases him mercilessly with both his words and his body, lifting himself nearly completely off of Hannibal’s cock before allowing his body to slide back down Hannibal’s shaft achingly slowly. 

“I am simply proud of who you have become, what  _ we  _ have become together. Is it wrong of me to want to share that with the world? So that they can praise you, worship you as I do? You say I am a God in my world, but dear Will, it is  _ you  _ whom I worship, the only person worthy of my devotion. No God, nor man, nor monster has ever seen me as you do, has never loved me as you can. No one else would have survived me long enough to even  _ try.”  _

Will’s teeth sink into his bottom lip even as the edges of his mouth curl into a smirk. He ceases the up and down motion of his hips and sits heavily upon Hannibal, twisting his pelvis in tight circles instead. “I can’t tell if you’re praising  _ me _ or glad-handing  _ yourself.” _

And that,  _ that,  _ jest as it may be, is unacceptable. Hannibal wraps his hands around Will’s hips, pushes his own up into Will forcefully to unseat the stable position he’s found over Hannibal, and then rolls them with a lithe grace that, if he is honest with himself, he is still surprised to possess so greatly at his age.

Will doesn’t fight the movement, doesn’t struggle as soon as Hannibal has him pinned on his back. He merely gazes up at him expectantly, pelvis tilting up invitingly and legs wrapping confidently around Hannibal’s hips. 

“You,” Hannibal confirms, rolling his hips to pull away and then sinking deep into the welcoming, tight heat of Will. He dips his head to press kisses to Will’s chest, up his throat. “Always you,” he murmurs as he drags his lips along the line of Will’s jaw. “All the praise, devotion,  _ worship,”  _ his tongue darts out to trace the line of scar tissue that bisects Will’s cheek before he places a soft kiss a bit higher to Will’s temple. “All the love, Will,” he breathes into Will’s ear, working his cock into his lover steadily. “All for you. Always.”

_ “Hannibal,”  _ Will sighs at the declarations, legs wrapping tighter around Hannibal and hands finding his face and neck until he can guide Hannibal to where he wants him, tilt his face and pull it closer until their mouths meet in a soft kiss, and then another and another. “You romantic asshole. Do you realize how much time and energy we would have saved if you’d just tried to seduce me from the beginning?”

He notes that Will doesn’t mention blood spilled, hearts broken or lives lost. Perhaps he finally realizes that even as smoothly as things  _ might _ have gone for them, in another world, all of the above were simply unavoidable.

“Did you ever consider that everything I’ve done up to this point has simply been a seduction, dear Will?” Hannibal spreads Will’s legs wider to make more room for himself, stabilizing his thrusts and allowing him to drive into Will relentlessly. 

Will’s laughter this time is slightly more breathless, and Hannibal grins down at him as he increases his pace, filling Will up completely before nearly pulling all the way out. Finally, he slams in and holds his hips against Will’s, grinding into him with slow, teasing circles. Will’s fingers are like claws against Hannibal’s flanks, pulling him closer and ripping his skin open in thin red lines. 

“Come on, Hannibal. Fill me up, I know you want to make me  _ yours,”  _ Will taunts him, lip held between his teeth hard enough to turn it white as he looks up at Hannibal with mischief and arousal turning his eyes nearly black. 

Hannibal obliges him, wraps a hand around Will’s cock where it leaks against his lower abdomen, and focuses on the head, keeping his grip tight with short, rough motions just like Will likes. 

It doesn’t take long - Will’s body has always been so terribly  _ accomodating _ to Hannibal - and then Will is tumbling into his pleasure, thighs shaking and his come staining his stomach and Hannibal’s palm. Hannibal uses the friction of Will’s clenching hole and throws himself over the edge, his release pulsing into Will and filling him up just as he’d asked. He leans low to snarl into Will’s ear, even as Will’s chest heaves while he tries to catch his breath. “You’ve  _ always _ been  _ mine,  _ darling boy.”

\---

Epilogue

There is a certain sort of ironic poetry in the way that Will spots the distant shoreline just as the sun is breaking over the Eastern horizon. The land is a dark line that splits the endless blue of the ocean spreading before them and the brightening oranges and pinks of the sky. He is surprised to find that the image instills an oddly unexpected sense of  _ hope,  _ of  _ possibility. _

He doesn’t know why he would feel any differently; they have the world laid out at their feet, really. Once they slip into Portugal, they’ll be able to go  _ anywhere _ in Europe with little difficulty; with Hannibal’s absurd fortune and their, admittedly even  _ more _ absurd, combined luck and cleverness, the two of them will be able to leap over any hurdle that dares to block their path.

Once they land, he’ll need to part with this boat, just like he had left their first boat in Havana. Will can’t help but feel a bit nostalgic, knows he’ll miss the boats just like he misses all of the other things he’s sacrificed to get here. But he knows it will all be worth it. 

He senses that Hannibal is awake, has come above deck, before any physical tell is noted. In the moment before the deck creaks behind him, the strong, bitter scent of black coffee wafts toward him on a salty breeze, or the warm, heavy comfort of the blanket that is draped around his shoulders appears, Will can feel the very  _ air _ shift as Hannibal’s form dispels it.

“I owe you an apology. It seems you haven’t steered us wrong after all.”

Will’s lips twitch into a grin as he accepts the steaming mug placed into his hand, using his other to tug the blanket more tightly around himself. His eyes never leave that promising strip of land.

“I told you it’d only be one more day. I’d think after all the time we’ve spent on a boat in the last year that you’d have a bit more faith in my abilities. I got us to Cuba, didn’t I?”

Hannibal’s hand finds the chilled nape of Will’s neck, and he feels himself relaxing into the grip, his lover’s skin still warm from the mug of coffee he’d transported from below deck. “You did,” Hannibal agrees softly, his fingers slipping higher to the base of Will’s skull and squeezing away the tension there that is a near constant presence. “And now you’re getting us to Europe. I shall make a note to never doubt that you will get us to where we need to be.”

Will pulls the mug of coffee closer to his chest, breathing in the aromatic steam and taking a careful sip. It is black and bitter, fresh and just the wrong side of too hot; it’s perfect. 

“You’ve been getting us to where we needed to be for six years,” Will points out. He gives a shrug in the form of a small twitch of his shoulder, careful not to dislodge Hannibal’s welcome touch from his neck. “Only fair that it’s my turn now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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